“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23)
There is no place like home, that is what they say. Some like me have really never had a home. Some are orphaned or put into foster homes and homes for boys and girls. Hopefully perhaps some of them will find a home. Some have a "house" to live in but it is not a home, there is a difference. Not having a "home" is a crisis affecting many children today.* When I became a believer I remember the peace I experienced and the voice I heard, saying "you are home." Our heavenly Father calls us home, staying home is where we belong, and he has prepared a heavenly home for us.
“Come to me, all the ones weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28)
The old gospel hymn sings, "Come home! come home! Ye who are weary, come home!" For those, he has called home he blesses in Christ with the promise of adoption, mercy, and forgiveness. And those who have fellowship with the Son have fellowship with the Father (1 John 1:3-4). John is writing these things so that our joy may be complete. We experience joy when we come home and joy when we stay home. And one day our joy will be made complete.
"according to his promise we are expectant of a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness will be at home" (2 Peter 3:13).
We know we are not yet home, though we are made righteous in Christ, we live in a body in an earth where righteousness is not yet at home. For we are in this transient home or tent of a body, confident we would rather be away from this body and at home with the Lord, whichever at home or away, our goal Paul writes, is to be pleasing to him (2 Corinthians 5:6-9). "For indeed in this tent, we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling place" (2 Corinthians 5:5:2). If our earthly tent is taken down we have a building from God, a house not made with the hands of man but eternal in the heavens (2 Corinthians 5:1).
"While we remain in this tent we groan and are burdened, not because we want to be unclothed but clothed so that what is mortal may be swallowed up in life." (2 Corinthians 5:4)
The Spirit groans within us awaiting the fullness of our adoption, the redemption of the body, the revealing of the sons of God, into glorious freedom (Romans 8:18-26). "For that hope, we are saved, now hope seen exists not hope for who hopes for what he sees? but if we hope for which we do not see, we expectantly wait through endurance" (Romans 24-25). For what can we compare the sufferings in this earthly tent to the glory to be revealed? So we live like those of great faith, putting off the old, and "longing for a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one. For this reason, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city to receive them" (Hebrews 11:16). We come home, stay at home in fellowship with him, ever reaching toward the consummation of our joy, awaiting expectantly to be at home with the Lord.
"If anyone loves me, keeping my words, also my Father loves him and comes to him and makes his dwelling place with him" (John 14:23).
God makes his home inside us when the Holy Spirit indwells us. We do not just come home and then go off on our own, he has called us to have fellowship, to remain, to stay home, to abide and be in His presence. This is where we belong in Christ, it is who we are, we are at home. He wants us to stay home, in the Light where we have fellowship with each other. This is how our joy and love get richer, as we know him more and grow in knowledge of the Son into maturity. "Now whoever keeps his words, truly in that person is the love of God fulfilled, in knowing because existing in Him, the one claiming to abide in God ought to walk just as Jesus walked" (1 John 2:5-6).
For children who have never experienced having a home, there is a tendency to be withdrawn, or reserved towards those who offer them a home. For them, our heavenly Father reminds they have an eternal home where they belong. Paul writes God predestined us for adoption as His own before he created the world and to those predestined he calls, justifies, and glorifies (Romans 8:28-30; Ephesians 1:4-5). Joy is experienced as we come home and our joy gets richer in His love as we abide becoming like Jesus. Jesus said the Father is glorified in that we bear fruit, surely, this for us as his children means a deeper love, joy, and fellowship in Him. Come home to a Father with open loving arms, and stay home where you belong. Come home to where you belong.